You knew I was back. XD
Damn I swore I wouldn't be up this late.
But then...it's been a while, so I wanted to finish it.
It's a Naruto piece that has no porn in it.
I'M TRYING SAM. I AM. (But you knew that. It's too right for me to try at this.)
It's just-
I'll talk about that later.
DAMMIT MY ROUTINE I'LL DIE NOW.
Kate;
God, I'm still just so happy.
I'm going to start loving more.
Don't ever give up.
(Bittersweet as it is.)
How is your painting going?
Morgan;
Thankyou.
I'm going to call and see if-
...SHH IT'S A SECRET.
Be okay - I want to help you too.
And I wrote it down this time...so I won't lose it.
I'm so lame. XDDDD
To Each His Own - Naruto - Hatake Kakashi character piece - PG-13
Kakashi’s name means ‘scarecrow’, and his father gives it to him three days after his birth, because even at three days old he stares blankly at everything and frightens the midwives with his solemness. Konoha’s White Flash awards it to him with a gruff, hearty laugh that Kakashi will never inherit, and the boy’s mother smiles softly to herself and shakes her head in soft disbelief at how well-deserved it is.
He really doesn’t like them, the first time he sees them. He’s heard plenty - “Take care of them, Kakashi,” “This better be the passing group, Kakashi,” - and that’s to be expected. He’s expected to go to great lengths to flatter Konoha’s Precious Uchiha boy, he’s expected to act other than he’s been trained in lieu of circumstance, because that’s the obvious thing to do. But Kakashi has never been one to do the obvious because Kakashi is not an obvious person.
(He has a knack for surprising people.)
There are three of them - there are always three of them, and Kakashi knows because every year it is exactly the same and he’s not sure whether it irritates him or bores him or both. (It’s probably both.) He peers at them between his fingers, and - as always - he can choose which thing he will like about them all the least. He sighs slightly to himself-
The blond is too (loud, brash, ignorant and) forward. (Subtlety is Kakashi’s strength, to be certain, and Yondaime taught him that. And he thinks that his sensei was too talented and young to have left such a disgraceful thing behind to take his place, and it isn’t because of the demon that Kakashi says it, but because of Naruto’s lack of knowledge of his heritage, his lack of respect for it, the way that Kakashi’s teacher was behind each and every one of Naruto’s facial expressions and movements, but not behind any of his words.)
Haruno-chan is too (much of a girl? He won’t say that out loud, not having known Rin - it was a pleasure, he knows that, and he was honored and it shouldn’t have ended, so he decides that Haruno-chan is just too) self-centered. (Ironically, her thoughts were focused entirely on another person, but that was still a type of narcissism because it hindered anyone else from being productive, and somehow stopped her from being decent to her fellows. Rin would’ve never let something like that happen.)
Uchiha-kun is too (much like his brother. Kakashi remembers Itachi - oh, does he ever - and every time that boy moves he can see the older missing-nin in his eyes, on his skin. They are so similar it’s almost given him the chills a few times now, and at the same time he doesn’t like Uchihas in general, and it isn’t from meeting Itachi - watching him kill - it’s from losing Obito and knowing that no matter what, Uchihas are always selfish. And of course, Sasuke’s selfishness is that of a child who is waiting for something that won’t come, a child who is) spiteful.
And he really doesn’t like them, because when they speak their dreams to him, he sighs again, knowing how easily all but one of them will break, but not knowing which. (Knowing that the one who succeeds will be broken anyway.)
He decides to pass them on a simple whim because they remind him of Yondaime.
(“Remember, Kakashi. Teamwork is the most valuable skill a ninja can ever possess.”)
Kakashi has a definite way of surprising people. It hasn’t changed.
Kakashi is a happy child, and that is all ruined when he brings his blond, bright-eyed sensei home with him to meet his father, only to find him hanging by a cord from a rafter in the ceiling. (And in that moment, Kakashi’s happiness ends and even late, late in life when he learns to coax it out when he can - when he learns that Naruto is infectious, that even he feels safe around him sometimes, when that big grin gets turned on him - he still cannot forget the way Yondaime kept him still and grieved with him. He still cannot forget the way that if he had been older he would’ve recognized his father’s tragic look and the words “Kakashi, you know I love you always, don’t you…?” before he left the house. He would’ve known not to just blink up at him stupidly without nodding and then leaving without a word.)
He never forgives him(self, and he loves them both so much - his true father, and the one he chooses afterwards.)
“Do they remind you of your old team?”
Sarutoubi smiles at him in a soft, paternal way over his steaming mug of tea, and Kakashi thinks that his the teacher of his teacher’s teacher (functions more as his grandfather rather than as his employer, and he’s quite a nice grandfather, if he thinks about it) is getting very old. (In thinking that he’s forced to think of how old Jiraiya is. Of how old Yondaime would’ve been this year, of how Obito would be fairing if he hadn’t-) There are tangible maps of sepia brown that lie across his skin, covering it in patterns that actually very nice looking.
Kakashi watches him with both eyes bared, not because he’s being fearsome, but because he’d rather like to be honest, right now. Kakashi never feels like he can be honest without both his eyes showing. (It’s like saying “This is what I really am, you know.”) His hands are in his pockets, and his left eye is closed - the scar running over it is more like a bead of water than a piece of ruined skin - but he’s being honest, and the old man knows it, he’s sure. He studies him (the question) a minute longer and he’s aware as Sarutoubi gives him time, lips curled against his pipe.
“If I were to say so,” Kakashi finally sighs, “that would be to compare myself to Yondaime.”
He shakes his head softly, his silver hair swaying.
“I’m not Yondaime.” Kakashi doesn’t make himself out to be anything remotely close.
Sarutoubi nods in a knowing way, seeming content with the answer; not as if he were expecting it, but as if he can accept it, and Kakashi likes that about Sarutoubi, who seems so capable of accepting so many things. (His students.)
“That boy,” the Sandaime says with a sigh, glancing at the wall.
He doesn’t need to say anymore. Kakashi knows what he means.
It’s enough just to look at a picture, because it makes you wish you had the real thing, and that reminds you that it won’t be back and that nothing in the present day even compares. (It reminds you that nothing will ever compare, and that there are some funerals that last centuries, rather than hours, and that that was the worst day of everyone’s life.)
In the Mist, Kakashi still thinks that Naruto is an idiot - from the way there, to twenty feet above him in a tree, Kakashi is very sure that Naruto is an idiot. He supposes that if knowledge were measured by the length of one’s spine, it would make sense. As it is, the boy is made up entirely of idiocy and it makes Kakashi wish he were a different, more violent kind of person, or at least less intelligent. (He stops though, because he realizes that he is wishing he were Gai.)
That has already changed, though. He knows that Naruto’s dumbness is more naïveté than anything else, and that if the boy has anything he’s got more spirit (and potential) than either of his teammates could ever hope to have. He has drive, he has ambition and it’s not Sasuke’s kind of ambition. (Sasuke has a type of ambition that Kakashi can recognize, that he can understand because it is a type of ambition that he himself has always had. Sasuke and Kakashi are more kin than the boy realizes, and Kakashi knows that that will be useful someday, even though it’s irritating to watch the Uchiha make the same mistakes he had to live through.) He doesn’t know what kind of ambition it is.
(It’s the kind of ambition his sensei always had.)
Kakashi still thinks that Naruto is an idiot.
He also thinks that Naruto is stronger than his teammates know, and he thinks he can do it.
“You’re going to climb trees.”
Kakashi knows that his children cry - and they are his children, after the Mist, and he knows that this is exactly what Yondaime must’ve felt for him, this remarkable parent-like bond - because Sakura cries openly, and Sasuke is unreasonably quiet sometimes, and Naruto’s face will flush with an emotion that is not embarrassment, sometimes, when all those people berate him and call him names he doesn’t deserve. He knows they do - but they do not ever cry in front of him, and they are always strong, underneath the sadness, and he knows how hard this is, and so he thinks that it is alright, so long as they save it for times when it is appropriate. He does not love them any less for it.
(And he does love them. They are his children, after all, and they are so precious to him, being all that he has, and he knows what it is to have everything to lose at every moment because he is old enough to know that this is remarkable, that this is another type of family, and that they are family. He cannot say who is the father, who is the mother - sometimes he plays both parts at once, sometimes he doesn’t play them at all - or who play the siblings, because it is not that kind of family. It is a different kind of family. A family that graduates the definition of family. He loves them deeply, he loves them as their teacher and as their comrades. He loves them because he’s old enough to know that he could lose them, and that it is more likely than not that they will eventually lose one another.)
“I will never let my comrades die.” And it’s a promise, because this is precious, and it is precious because he knows that eventually - or maybe soon - it will end.
(Obito’s eye tells him so, when he lies still at night.)
After Orochimaru turns and leaves, cold laughter still ringing across the floors of the hall where Sasuke lies still on the floor, Kakashi feels frozen and numb. His fingers tremble at the notion that he could lose his stupid, selfish Uchiha prodigy to this tyrannical, snake-like creature, and he is quiet. (He is quiet and stares into the darkness, because he is afraid. He is afraid that Sasuke will be taken from him right in front of his eyes without him being able to do anything.)
When he confronts Kabuto in the tower-like hospice, his moves are explosive and violent and almost unplanned because he doesn’t want Sasuke to be taken from him. (Because Sasuke is one of his three precious children, and his three precious, precious children are all that he has anymore.) He fights with everything he has, and it surprises the ANBU who follow to help him because no one has ever seen him like this before, and they assume that he is doing his best to protect the last of the Uchiha for the sake of the village’s honor. They are content with this.
When Sasuke opens his eyes, Kakashi stares out of the window, because he knows that something has to change.
(“The exams are over, Sasuke.”)
Sasuke finds him on the top of a cliff and Kakashi is almost embarrassed by it, because he should’ve been able to scale it much faster, and he’s been slacking because he’s been worried. (And that itself is troubling because Kakashi is never worried so much about just one thing - “They are soldiers under my command.” Then why couldn’t he let them fight by themselves…? Why did he not feel safe if he was not by their side? Why did he not feel right letting them face all this on their own…?) The wind buffets him and he sighs to himself.
“I thought you’d come.”
(Because Kakashi is scared that he will lose them.)
Shinobi do not live long lives. In that respect, Kakashi is middle-aged.
On his own, Kakashi feels older than time, and he goes to the shrine every day, without fail, to remind him what he had. (What he’s lost to his own ignorance, to his own inability to appreciate what’s in front of him, his own inability to appreciate Rin, Obito, Yondaime’s love for what it was, his own inability to love them back in time.)
“Sensei, I think you’d like him.”
He is not surprised when it’s Naruto who beats Gaara and not Sasuke - though he is proud that Sasuke was able to hold his own for so long, and he knows that it was a result of the training - and he’s not surprised that Sakura is the reason, and he’s not surprised that the red-head and the blond part as friends, because even if Kakashi is surprising, he is no longer surprised by Sasuke’s way of constantly being second-best to Naruto’s compassion.
What he’s surprised by is the fact that Sasuke admits to it, and the way Sakura believes the truth, having heard it.
(They’re growing, and he knows they are.)
He isn’t surprised when they tell him Sasuke’s gone - he’s not startled, he’s not shocked.
He’s disappointed and upset about it, but not shocked. (He knows Orochimaru offered him what the boy would never refuse. It disappoints him, but it doesn’t stop his knowing it.)
He isn’t surprised when they find Sakura on a bench, though he is a bit taken aback be Sasuke’s chivalry in leaving her on a bench, and not in the middle of the road, like he knows the boy would’ve, earlier in the history of their team.
When the new Hokage calls him in to question him, he answers everything without flaw and without lying, because he doesn’t need to. When Gai and Asuma and Kurenai come to pay him their condolences he feels even more like a parent, but he simply nods and keeps telling himself that There’s Nothing to Be Done, and It Will Just Have to Be Alright.
When Naruto goes after Sasuke, that’s when his heart stops.
“I miss them,” Rin says, looking over the side of the bridge, her eyes remote and gray and dark.
“I’m sorry Rin.”
She looks over at him, blinking, and he stares up as the blue sky darkens, the stars peeking at him in a lonely way.
“For what?”
“For living.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.” He looks at her, and his expression is soft and earnest. “I’m sorry that I lived and Obito died. I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened that way. I shouldn’t have let him save me.” He looks away. “I shouldn’t have-”
“Don’t say it.” Her lips are bunched and she shakes her head vigorously. “Don’t, Kakashi. Don’t say that.”
He looks back at her and she cries between her hands, and a long time ago he would’ve wanted to hold her, but since he’s lost Obito (five years ago,) he seems to have entirely lost his appetite for food or drink or women. It used to be healthy but know, he just doesn’t know what to talk about, with her. He’s yet to regain his ability to breath.
So they just look at each other for a long time afterwards, and she kisses him soft and sad on the lips. (But it doesn’t mean anything, because nothing really means anything anymore. They have no Obito and no Yondaime, and they can’t hold onto each other, because Kakashi was always jealous that she liked Obito better, and jealousy isn’t friendship. It’s too busy being envious for something like that.)
“I’m sorry too, Kakashi.”
He walks her home, but they aren’t a couple. They’re not even really friends, anymore. Just two parts of a shattered team. A dead family. Her parents don’t recognize him - it takes them a few minutes, and then they just nod vaguely.
A week later, Rin is dead from chakra exhaustion.
Kakashi attends the funeral, but no one asks him to say anything, because no one but Rin knows he’s there.
He finds the blond lying on the dirt, half-dead with a gaping hole in his chest, and Kyuubi is trying to heal him - he can see by the way the flesh and lung are reforming behind the fragments of bone, and it would disturb him if he weren’t so relieved that Naruto was Naruto and not Sasuke, though he’s sure it could’ve happened that way. He find him and when he does, he knows that Sasuke isn’t far off, but he isn’t going to go after him, because Sasuke is a might. Sasuke is a maybe. (He might catch him. He might incapacitate him. Maybe, if he’s lucky.) But Naruto was a definitely. (Naruto would die if he didn’t take him back to Konoha right now.)
He knows that, when Naruto wakes, he will have already forgiven him, and he knows that he will wake, because Kakashi isn’t going to let him die, and he knows that the Fox won’t either. He knows that trust is not the same as forgiveness - Naruto will probably never trust Sasuke ever again - but Naruto is very good at knowing the difference. (At knowing the importance of one versus the other.) He knows that the brotherhood Naruto feels for Sasuke will not cease because of distance or because of choice, because he knows that Naruto only has one family (because, in that respect, he and Naruto are the same) and that he won’t let anyone take that away from him. He knows that Naruto is stubborn, and will forgive him.
But Kakashi doesn’t know if he can. Sasuke tried to kill him. Kill him. And he knows that the real difference between Naruto and himself, is that. (That one of them can forgive, and the other can’t, even if neither of them can ever forgive themselves.) He knows that the real difference is that Naruto does not have to shed anything in order to be honest.
Kakashi thinks that it is still both the worst and best thing about him.
“Do they remind you of your old team?”
And Tsunade’s face is sad, when she says it, which is what makes her entirely different from her teacher. It’s what makes Kakashi aware that age is relative - that Sarutoubi was old because he understood, and Tsunade is young even in her age because she still doesn’t understand that funerals are truly a celebration of life, not a mourning of death. (Kakashi has trouble understanding that, himself. But it’s no worry. If he is not a ninja, he is young too.)
He smiles to himself, then, to be the one to do it, because-
“I think Naruto is very much like his father.”
Tsunade smiles, looking almost relieved at the thought.
“I think so too. They’re capable of miracles.” She looks very thoughtful and content at the notion.
Kakashi nods and doesn’t deny it at all.
(And they aren’t as broken as he thought they were.)
It's a good one. AND PAIRINGLESS OMIGOD FTW.
I might post it somewhere else IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'VE DONE THAT IT WILL HAVE TO BE A DUMP.
Oh.
And btw.
WE FINISHED THE LOG.
OH YEAH. BITE ME GOD. BITE ME.
But then...it's been a while, so I wanted to finish it.
It's a Naruto piece that has no porn in it.
I'M TRYING SAM. I AM. (But you knew that. It's too right for me to try at this.)
It's just-
I'll talk about that later.
DAMMIT MY ROUTINE I'LL DIE NOW.
Kate;
God, I'm still just so happy.
I'm going to start loving more.
Don't ever give up.
(Bittersweet as it is.)
How is your painting going?
Morgan;
Thankyou.
I'm going to call and see if-
...SHH IT'S A SECRET.
Be okay - I want to help you too.
And I wrote it down this time...so I won't lose it.
I'm so lame. XDDDD
To Each His Own - Naruto - Hatake Kakashi character piece - PG-13
Kakashi’s name means ‘scarecrow’, and his father gives it to him three days after his birth, because even at three days old he stares blankly at everything and frightens the midwives with his solemness. Konoha’s White Flash awards it to him with a gruff, hearty laugh that Kakashi will never inherit, and the boy’s mother smiles softly to herself and shakes her head in soft disbelief at how well-deserved it is.
He really doesn’t like them, the first time he sees them. He’s heard plenty - “Take care of them, Kakashi,” “This better be the passing group, Kakashi,” - and that’s to be expected. He’s expected to go to great lengths to flatter Konoha’s Precious Uchiha boy, he’s expected to act other than he’s been trained in lieu of circumstance, because that’s the obvious thing to do. But Kakashi has never been one to do the obvious because Kakashi is not an obvious person.
(He has a knack for surprising people.)
There are three of them - there are always three of them, and Kakashi knows because every year it is exactly the same and he’s not sure whether it irritates him or bores him or both. (It’s probably both.) He peers at them between his fingers, and - as always - he can choose which thing he will like about them all the least. He sighs slightly to himself-
The blond is too (loud, brash, ignorant and) forward. (Subtlety is Kakashi’s strength, to be certain, and Yondaime taught him that. And he thinks that his sensei was too talented and young to have left such a disgraceful thing behind to take his place, and it isn’t because of the demon that Kakashi says it, but because of Naruto’s lack of knowledge of his heritage, his lack of respect for it, the way that Kakashi’s teacher was behind each and every one of Naruto’s facial expressions and movements, but not behind any of his words.)
Haruno-chan is too (much of a girl? He won’t say that out loud, not having known Rin - it was a pleasure, he knows that, and he was honored and it shouldn’t have ended, so he decides that Haruno-chan is just too) self-centered. (Ironically, her thoughts were focused entirely on another person, but that was still a type of narcissism because it hindered anyone else from being productive, and somehow stopped her from being decent to her fellows. Rin would’ve never let something like that happen.)
Uchiha-kun is too (much like his brother. Kakashi remembers Itachi - oh, does he ever - and every time that boy moves he can see the older missing-nin in his eyes, on his skin. They are so similar it’s almost given him the chills a few times now, and at the same time he doesn’t like Uchihas in general, and it isn’t from meeting Itachi - watching him kill - it’s from losing Obito and knowing that no matter what, Uchihas are always selfish. And of course, Sasuke’s selfishness is that of a child who is waiting for something that won’t come, a child who is) spiteful.
And he really doesn’t like them, because when they speak their dreams to him, he sighs again, knowing how easily all but one of them will break, but not knowing which. (Knowing that the one who succeeds will be broken anyway.)
He decides to pass them on a simple whim because they remind him of Yondaime.
(“Remember, Kakashi. Teamwork is the most valuable skill a ninja can ever possess.”)
Kakashi has a definite way of surprising people. It hasn’t changed.
Kakashi is a happy child, and that is all ruined when he brings his blond, bright-eyed sensei home with him to meet his father, only to find him hanging by a cord from a rafter in the ceiling. (And in that moment, Kakashi’s happiness ends and even late, late in life when he learns to coax it out when he can - when he learns that Naruto is infectious, that even he feels safe around him sometimes, when that big grin gets turned on him - he still cannot forget the way Yondaime kept him still and grieved with him. He still cannot forget the way that if he had been older he would’ve recognized his father’s tragic look and the words “Kakashi, you know I love you always, don’t you…?” before he left the house. He would’ve known not to just blink up at him stupidly without nodding and then leaving without a word.)
He never forgives him(self, and he loves them both so much - his true father, and the one he chooses afterwards.)
“Do they remind you of your old team?”
Sarutoubi smiles at him in a soft, paternal way over his steaming mug of tea, and Kakashi thinks that his the teacher of his teacher’s teacher (functions more as his grandfather rather than as his employer, and he’s quite a nice grandfather, if he thinks about it) is getting very old. (In thinking that he’s forced to think of how old Jiraiya is. Of how old Yondaime would’ve been this year, of how Obito would be fairing if he hadn’t-) There are tangible maps of sepia brown that lie across his skin, covering it in patterns that actually very nice looking.
Kakashi watches him with both eyes bared, not because he’s being fearsome, but because he’d rather like to be honest, right now. Kakashi never feels like he can be honest without both his eyes showing. (It’s like saying “This is what I really am, you know.”) His hands are in his pockets, and his left eye is closed - the scar running over it is more like a bead of water than a piece of ruined skin - but he’s being honest, and the old man knows it, he’s sure. He studies him (the question) a minute longer and he’s aware as Sarutoubi gives him time, lips curled against his pipe.
“If I were to say so,” Kakashi finally sighs, “that would be to compare myself to Yondaime.”
He shakes his head softly, his silver hair swaying.
“I’m not Yondaime.” Kakashi doesn’t make himself out to be anything remotely close.
Sarutoubi nods in a knowing way, seeming content with the answer; not as if he were expecting it, but as if he can accept it, and Kakashi likes that about Sarutoubi, who seems so capable of accepting so many things. (His students.)
“That boy,” the Sandaime says with a sigh, glancing at the wall.
He doesn’t need to say anymore. Kakashi knows what he means.
It’s enough just to look at a picture, because it makes you wish you had the real thing, and that reminds you that it won’t be back and that nothing in the present day even compares. (It reminds you that nothing will ever compare, and that there are some funerals that last centuries, rather than hours, and that that was the worst day of everyone’s life.)
In the Mist, Kakashi still thinks that Naruto is an idiot - from the way there, to twenty feet above him in a tree, Kakashi is very sure that Naruto is an idiot. He supposes that if knowledge were measured by the length of one’s spine, it would make sense. As it is, the boy is made up entirely of idiocy and it makes Kakashi wish he were a different, more violent kind of person, or at least less intelligent. (He stops though, because he realizes that he is wishing he were Gai.)
That has already changed, though. He knows that Naruto’s dumbness is more naïveté than anything else, and that if the boy has anything he’s got more spirit (and potential) than either of his teammates could ever hope to have. He has drive, he has ambition and it’s not Sasuke’s kind of ambition. (Sasuke has a type of ambition that Kakashi can recognize, that he can understand because it is a type of ambition that he himself has always had. Sasuke and Kakashi are more kin than the boy realizes, and Kakashi knows that that will be useful someday, even though it’s irritating to watch the Uchiha make the same mistakes he had to live through.) He doesn’t know what kind of ambition it is.
(It’s the kind of ambition his sensei always had.)
Kakashi still thinks that Naruto is an idiot.
He also thinks that Naruto is stronger than his teammates know, and he thinks he can do it.
“You’re going to climb trees.”
Kakashi knows that his children cry - and they are his children, after the Mist, and he knows that this is exactly what Yondaime must’ve felt for him, this remarkable parent-like bond - because Sakura cries openly, and Sasuke is unreasonably quiet sometimes, and Naruto’s face will flush with an emotion that is not embarrassment, sometimes, when all those people berate him and call him names he doesn’t deserve. He knows they do - but they do not ever cry in front of him, and they are always strong, underneath the sadness, and he knows how hard this is, and so he thinks that it is alright, so long as they save it for times when it is appropriate. He does not love them any less for it.
(And he does love them. They are his children, after all, and they are so precious to him, being all that he has, and he knows what it is to have everything to lose at every moment because he is old enough to know that this is remarkable, that this is another type of family, and that they are family. He cannot say who is the father, who is the mother - sometimes he plays both parts at once, sometimes he doesn’t play them at all - or who play the siblings, because it is not that kind of family. It is a different kind of family. A family that graduates the definition of family. He loves them deeply, he loves them as their teacher and as their comrades. He loves them because he’s old enough to know that he could lose them, and that it is more likely than not that they will eventually lose one another.)
“I will never let my comrades die.” And it’s a promise, because this is precious, and it is precious because he knows that eventually - or maybe soon - it will end.
(Obito’s eye tells him so, when he lies still at night.)
After Orochimaru turns and leaves, cold laughter still ringing across the floors of the hall where Sasuke lies still on the floor, Kakashi feels frozen and numb. His fingers tremble at the notion that he could lose his stupid, selfish Uchiha prodigy to this tyrannical, snake-like creature, and he is quiet. (He is quiet and stares into the darkness, because he is afraid. He is afraid that Sasuke will be taken from him right in front of his eyes without him being able to do anything.)
When he confronts Kabuto in the tower-like hospice, his moves are explosive and violent and almost unplanned because he doesn’t want Sasuke to be taken from him. (Because Sasuke is one of his three precious children, and his three precious, precious children are all that he has anymore.) He fights with everything he has, and it surprises the ANBU who follow to help him because no one has ever seen him like this before, and they assume that he is doing his best to protect the last of the Uchiha for the sake of the village’s honor. They are content with this.
When Sasuke opens his eyes, Kakashi stares out of the window, because he knows that something has to change.
(“The exams are over, Sasuke.”)
Sasuke finds him on the top of a cliff and Kakashi is almost embarrassed by it, because he should’ve been able to scale it much faster, and he’s been slacking because he’s been worried. (And that itself is troubling because Kakashi is never worried so much about just one thing - “They are soldiers under my command.” Then why couldn’t he let them fight by themselves…? Why did he not feel safe if he was not by their side? Why did he not feel right letting them face all this on their own…?) The wind buffets him and he sighs to himself.
“I thought you’d come.”
(Because Kakashi is scared that he will lose them.)
Shinobi do not live long lives. In that respect, Kakashi is middle-aged.
On his own, Kakashi feels older than time, and he goes to the shrine every day, without fail, to remind him what he had. (What he’s lost to his own ignorance, to his own inability to appreciate what’s in front of him, his own inability to appreciate Rin, Obito, Yondaime’s love for what it was, his own inability to love them back in time.)
“Sensei, I think you’d like him.”
He is not surprised when it’s Naruto who beats Gaara and not Sasuke - though he is proud that Sasuke was able to hold his own for so long, and he knows that it was a result of the training - and he’s not surprised that Sakura is the reason, and he’s not surprised that the red-head and the blond part as friends, because even if Kakashi is surprising, he is no longer surprised by Sasuke’s way of constantly being second-best to Naruto’s compassion.
What he’s surprised by is the fact that Sasuke admits to it, and the way Sakura believes the truth, having heard it.
(They’re growing, and he knows they are.)
He isn’t surprised when they tell him Sasuke’s gone - he’s not startled, he’s not shocked.
He’s disappointed and upset about it, but not shocked. (He knows Orochimaru offered him what the boy would never refuse. It disappoints him, but it doesn’t stop his knowing it.)
He isn’t surprised when they find Sakura on a bench, though he is a bit taken aback be Sasuke’s chivalry in leaving her on a bench, and not in the middle of the road, like he knows the boy would’ve, earlier in the history of their team.
When the new Hokage calls him in to question him, he answers everything without flaw and without lying, because he doesn’t need to. When Gai and Asuma and Kurenai come to pay him their condolences he feels even more like a parent, but he simply nods and keeps telling himself that There’s Nothing to Be Done, and It Will Just Have to Be Alright.
When Naruto goes after Sasuke, that’s when his heart stops.
“I miss them,” Rin says, looking over the side of the bridge, her eyes remote and gray and dark.
“I’m sorry Rin.”
She looks over at him, blinking, and he stares up as the blue sky darkens, the stars peeking at him in a lonely way.
“For what?”
“For living.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.” He looks at her, and his expression is soft and earnest. “I’m sorry that I lived and Obito died. I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened that way. I shouldn’t have let him save me.” He looks away. “I shouldn’t have-”
“Don’t say it.” Her lips are bunched and she shakes her head vigorously. “Don’t, Kakashi. Don’t say that.”
He looks back at her and she cries between her hands, and a long time ago he would’ve wanted to hold her, but since he’s lost Obito (five years ago,) he seems to have entirely lost his appetite for food or drink or women. It used to be healthy but know, he just doesn’t know what to talk about, with her. He’s yet to regain his ability to breath.
So they just look at each other for a long time afterwards, and she kisses him soft and sad on the lips. (But it doesn’t mean anything, because nothing really means anything anymore. They have no Obito and no Yondaime, and they can’t hold onto each other, because Kakashi was always jealous that she liked Obito better, and jealousy isn’t friendship. It’s too busy being envious for something like that.)
“I’m sorry too, Kakashi.”
He walks her home, but they aren’t a couple. They’re not even really friends, anymore. Just two parts of a shattered team. A dead family. Her parents don’t recognize him - it takes them a few minutes, and then they just nod vaguely.
A week later, Rin is dead from chakra exhaustion.
Kakashi attends the funeral, but no one asks him to say anything, because no one but Rin knows he’s there.
He finds the blond lying on the dirt, half-dead with a gaping hole in his chest, and Kyuubi is trying to heal him - he can see by the way the flesh and lung are reforming behind the fragments of bone, and it would disturb him if he weren’t so relieved that Naruto was Naruto and not Sasuke, though he’s sure it could’ve happened that way. He find him and when he does, he knows that Sasuke isn’t far off, but he isn’t going to go after him, because Sasuke is a might. Sasuke is a maybe. (He might catch him. He might incapacitate him. Maybe, if he’s lucky.) But Naruto was a definitely. (Naruto would die if he didn’t take him back to Konoha right now.)
He knows that, when Naruto wakes, he will have already forgiven him, and he knows that he will wake, because Kakashi isn’t going to let him die, and he knows that the Fox won’t either. He knows that trust is not the same as forgiveness - Naruto will probably never trust Sasuke ever again - but Naruto is very good at knowing the difference. (At knowing the importance of one versus the other.) He knows that the brotherhood Naruto feels for Sasuke will not cease because of distance or because of choice, because he knows that Naruto only has one family (because, in that respect, he and Naruto are the same) and that he won’t let anyone take that away from him. He knows that Naruto is stubborn, and will forgive him.
But Kakashi doesn’t know if he can. Sasuke tried to kill him. Kill him. And he knows that the real difference between Naruto and himself, is that. (That one of them can forgive, and the other can’t, even if neither of them can ever forgive themselves.) He knows that the real difference is that Naruto does not have to shed anything in order to be honest.
Kakashi thinks that it is still both the worst and best thing about him.
“Do they remind you of your old team?”
And Tsunade’s face is sad, when she says it, which is what makes her entirely different from her teacher. It’s what makes Kakashi aware that age is relative - that Sarutoubi was old because he understood, and Tsunade is young even in her age because she still doesn’t understand that funerals are truly a celebration of life, not a mourning of death. (Kakashi has trouble understanding that, himself. But it’s no worry. If he is not a ninja, he is young too.)
He smiles to himself, then, to be the one to do it, because-
“I think Naruto is very much like his father.”
Tsunade smiles, looking almost relieved at the thought.
“I think so too. They’re capable of miracles.” She looks very thoughtful and content at the notion.
Kakashi nods and doesn’t deny it at all.
(And they aren’t as broken as he thought they were.)
It's a good one. AND PAIRINGLESS OMIGOD FTW.
I might post it somewhere else IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'VE DONE THAT IT WILL HAVE TO BE A DUMP.
Oh.
And btw.
WE FINISHED THE LOG.
OH YEAH. BITE ME GOD. BITE ME.